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Transparent Preaching Builds Trust

10 Tips to Transform Your Teaching—Part 2

In the last article we looked at how to preach Bible
stories by using running narrative. Let’s see another tip that can transform
your delivery:

2.
Transparency Leads to Trust

Once your people
trust you, it is amazing how their hearts become open to the truths you are preaching. I go to some large churches, and listen to the preacher, and the preaching is okay. It isn’t
anything spectacular, but you can tell that it is effective because the people
love their preacher and trust him. The preacher is transparent with them.

You can get a lot of truths in somebody’s heart when they trust you. When I go
somewhere to speak I spend a lot of time getting to know the people in order to build their trust.

One of the best ways
to be transparent is to down yourself—people just love it when you make fun of
yourself. That transparency of “man did I blow it” is great. People love that kind of honesty.

When I preach at
camps, usually on Monday night, I tell a story about a banana eating contest
that we had in our youth group when I was a youth pastor. The story’s very
funny, but in that story, I down myself because I really blew it with this
activity.

I describe the
struggles of a young person in that story, and I get to define my values of
where I’m headed for the week. I do it all in one story. They laugh with it,
but I look terrible in the story. Immediately when they leave, they are
connected with me, and I can do so much more with them the rest of the week.
That is because there is transparency there.

I think that being
transparent with your people is important in helping them understand that you
have the same struggles they do. Down yourself, define your values, and
describe your struggles with genuine openness.